“The Richest Feast"
Isaiah 55:1-3, 8-11 and Matthew 14:13-21
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
8/6/23
All of you who are thirsty, come to the water!
Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat!
Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk!
2Why spend money for what isn’t food,
and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy?
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good;
enjoy the richest of feasts.
3Listen and come to me;
listen, and you will live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful loyalty to David.
8My plans aren’t your plans,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
9Just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my plans than your plans.
10Just as the rain and the snow come down from the sky
and don’t return there without watering the earth,
making it conceive and yield plants
and providing seed to the sower
and food to the eater,
11so is my word that comes from my mouth;
it does not return to me empty.
Instead, it does what I want,
and accomplishes what I intend. (Isaiah 55:1-3, 8-11 – CEB)
13 When Jesus heard about John, he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. When the crowds learned this, they followed him on foot from the cities. 14 When Jesus arrived and saw a large crowd, he had compassion for them and healed those who were sick. 15 That evening his disciples came and said to him, “This is an isolated place and it’s getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
16 But Jesus said to them, “There’s no need to send them away. You give them something to eat.”
17 They replied, “We have nothing here except five loaves of bread and two fish.”
18 He said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves of bread and the two fish, looked up to heaven, blessed them and broke the loaves apart and gave them to his disciples. Then the disciples gave them to the crowds.20 Everyone ate until they were full, and they filled twelve baskets with the leftovers. 21 About five thousand men plus women and children had eaten. (Matthew 14:13-21 - CEB)
Isaiah prophesied to Jewish exiles in Babylon. And when the Babylonians defeated another nation, they scattered all the ordinary folks, while tending to bring the wealthiest and most influential individuals and families to Babylon. Because business and community leaders had the potential to help Babylon grow, they were welcomed with relative warmth by their abductors.
By the time Isaiah began to call the descendants of the original captives back to Jerusalem, many in the Jewish community held significant standing in Babylon. And as far as they were concerned, the “richest of feasts” to which Isaiah refers was the bounty they were already enjoying as fully-assimilated citizens of Babylonian—which had become their Stockholm-syndrome home.
In Matthew 14, Jesus offers a free and plentiful meal to a large crowd of ordinary people—hardly society’s elite. They follow Jesus to a place where there is nothing but Jesus himself. Overwhelmed with compassion for the suffering before him, Jesus feeds everyone who is desperate enough to follow him to this place that could not be more different from the opulence and extravagance of Babylon in the 6th century BCE.
The poor and sick people following Jesus receive the meal as a sign of God’s gracious presence and mysterious abundance. While exiled from the culture of plenty around them, they have more in common with the Israelites during the Exodus than the Jews in Babylon. Utterly dependent on God’s moment-to-moment grace, they rely on whatever manna drops into their hands.
Back in Babylon, Isaiah seems aware that he’s inviting his audience to return to a lower link on the geopolitical food chain, and there’s going to be push-back. He’s going to have to reacclimate the people to the language of faith, the language of covenant with God. He’ll have to remind them that God chose them to live as a sign of God’s grace. And to remember will involve hearing a humbling truth.
Through the prophet, God says, “Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans.”
You can’t comprehend me, says God. You can’t comprehend my plans, and all of you are included in them. You have been from the start. I’ve said so over and over. And my word, which I have spoken from my mouth, “does not return to me empty. It…accomplishes what I intend.”
Israel must keep God’s story going. And while God’s people in Babylon may think that they’ve arrived at greatness by living large in one of the world’s great cities, God reminds them that God has plans for them and for their descendants. They are to live as a perpetual witness to God’s creative and purpose-full presence. Through them, God is planting seeds, watering the earth, and revealing that the Creation itself is a feast at which all humankind is welcome.
While it would hardly be fair to say that Isaiah’s prophecy about the richest feast refers specifically to Jesus feeding the multitudes, or that it foreshadows what we call the Lord’s Supper, scripture consistently uses the metaphor of a banquet to reveal God’s realm as a place where all people gather to be nourished with sharedfood, drink, and community.
And it is in that sharing that we meet, face to face, the presence of God’s dynamic and transforming love. And we call that love the Christ.
To finish out this sermon, I’ve written a song for you. It’s my attempt to paraphrase Isaiah 55—thus the presumptuous voice of God from the first person.*
*Because I have yet to copyright the song, I have not included it in this post.
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